When comparing Loom SDK vs HaxePunk, the Slant community recommends HaxePunk for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D game engines?”HaxePunk is ranked 4th while Loom SDK is ranked 47th. The most important reason people chose HaxePunk is:

Useful for mobile games and soon consoles (OpenFL has a console port in the works).

Pros

Pro

Live reload of code and assets across multiple platforms

Loom can live update changes in realtime, allowing you to see them on multiple devices immediately.

Pro

Powerful command line workflow

Loom Turbo ($5/mo) gives access to powerful command line tools. For example, "loom new" to make a new project, "loom run" to run it. Packaging, deploy, and live reload are done automatically for you.

Pro

Open source

The Loom runtime and LoomScript compiler are open source, with code available on GitHub, allowing you to have the freedom to fix the bugs and add the features your game needs.

Pro

Examples

Loom includes over 30 examples ranging from complete sample games to demos of single features.

Pro

Familiar and powerful scripting

Loom's scripting language is immediately familiar if you know JavaScript, ActionScript, TypeScript, C#, or Java. Internally, it uses a proven VM technology with over 10 years of heavy use in games.

Pro

Good support

Loom devs are helpful.

Pro

Cross-platform

Loom can deploy to Windows, OS X, Linux, iOS, Android (including Nook, Kindle Fire and Ouya). There are also custom port available for WP8, Blackberry and consoles.

Pro

Joystick and multi-touch support

Useful for mobile games and soon consoles (OpenFL has a console port in the works).

Pro

Crossplatform testing/releasing

HaxePunk uses OpenFL which means you can compile to just about every device. A lot of the rendering code has been optimized so if you use HaxePunk’s graphic classes you are pretty much ready to deploy on any target.

Pro

Generic entity system

A generic Entity system that only uses what you “attach” to it. If you need collision masks they are available but if an entity doesn’t need to collide with anything then simply don’t add a mask. Same goes for graphics.

Pro

Multiple collision masks

HaxePunk has added several collision masks beyond what FlashPunk had including a grid with slope values, circles, and polygons. This is in addition to FlashPunk’s tile grid and hitbox.

Pro

Written in Haxe instead of AS3

Pro

Tweens

Tweens are available just like they are in FlashPunk. If you need to interpolate values for sounds, movement, etc… it’s probably already available as a tween. There is also a VarTween that lets you interpolate any value you want.

Cons

Con

Documentation is lacking

Con

No visual tools support

There's no level editor, asset viewer or any other visual tools in Loom SDK. Everything has to go through command line. I think it's fine if you really like typing.